Today I’ve been looking over a client’s Web site, gathering information for a newsletter. After I got past the home page’s Flash audio (sure to be a big hit with potential clients logging in from work), I was stunned by the poor quality of the text. During a quick once-over, I saw grammatical errors, spelling errors, prose which looked repurposed from other sites, and extended sentences created simply to eat up word count.

To be fair, this particular business is an “offline” entity, but they wouldn’t have a Web site at all if they didn’t think it could help bring in clients. So what kind of first impression does it make on a potential client if she sees a testimonial that appears to have been written by a fifth-grader? (Yes, it really was that bad.)

That business is far from alone. Without much effort, you can find Web sites, brochures, and ads with gratuitous verbiage, unintentional grammatical errors (we’re not counting “think different”) and even misspellings. In almost every case, you can wager your paycheck that the text was written by the Web designer, company president, or pretty much anybody but a professional writer.

You can also bet that every one of these companies believes that text is adequate for their needs.

Why? Let’s ask.

People are smart, they’ll figure it out.

Why would you want your potential customers to have to figure out your value proposition, or features, or worst of all, how to buy? It’s the copy’s job to make them understand.

Our product speaks for itself.

Then why have copy at all? If you simply put a good product snapshot and an order form on a single page, would you sell just as many? Products, even great ones, don’t speak. If they did, they’d say, “get me some good marketing and support, you ninny.”

We’ve got a crack sales and support staff.

Then why make their job harder? Will your best people stay around when they know how little effort goes into backing them up with written materials? It’s the copy’s job to help your staff.

A professional writer is an extravagance.

Would you keep a support rep who confuses your customers? Would you hire a sales agent whose resume was full of grammatical errors, or entire paragraphs that told you nothing about his qualifications?

Think of copy as a product’s resume, and it all starts to make sense, doesn’t it?